


But seas between us broad have roared...

by luna65



Category: Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 14:52:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3072164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna65/pseuds/luna65
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeremy has a special guest on NYE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But seas between us broad have roared...

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in my ongoing continuum, but in a less specified time than the other stories.  
> Based on Jeremy’s NYE tweet from a couple years back:  
>  _For the first time in my adult life, I'm not at a party on New Year's Eve. Kill me._

“You’ve done some horrid things to me, Clarkson, and a great many of them were in front of a camera.”

James gestured at the television with his pint glass.  It was somewhere shy of three in the morning and his companion was half-asleep beside him on the gargantuan leather monstrosity he called a sofa.

“All scripted,” the other muttered.

“By **you** , I’d like to point out, bleedin’ arse!”

“But that’s my point, Slow,” Jeremy continued, squirming towards a more comfortable position, though he prided himself on being able to kip anywhere.  “Fiction allows us the greatest of transgressions.  Would I have done you ill simply for the sake of it?  Absolutely not; but in a _story_ it’s quite proper.”

They had been mainlining a number of episodes of _Breaking Bad_ , which Jeremy enjoyed because it was so thoroughly without regret for its inherent violence.

“I can’t always trust you to know where that line is drawn,” James countered, which earned a huff of dismissal from the other.

“Lord love a duck you’re melodramatic.  If you’re going to continue to keep me awake you might as well ring for a curry, or something.”

“They don’t deliver this time of night!”

“It’s New Year’s Eve, _someone_ has to got to be open.”

James sighed and rolled his eyes, thinking it was a thoroughly ridiculous turn of events.

“Technically it’s New Year’s Day.”

“Pedant.”

“Talking orangutan who would have better stayed in a tree scratching his arse.”

“Y’see, that says it full-stop, y’just proved my use of that term yet again.”

Jeremy’s eyes were still closed.  James formed the smallest of smiles, knowing how much energy the other expended just to keep up the battle of wits.

“Curry,” Jeremy prompted.

James frowned, he was hungry, now that he thought about it.  And he knew there were any number of 24-hour takeaways in the area - long nights of filming had taught him the value of such things.

“Won’t sleep, y’know, if you eat madras now.  Chilis will give you nightmares.”

“I’m already in the middle of a nightmare, thanks ever so.”

James snorted with laughter he wasn’t entirely willing to produce and reached for his mobile on the table between the sofa and the television.

  
  


The holidays were always a rush-and-tumble of events and people and things to do.  Jeremy hadn’t pondered the notion of entropy in regards to family obligations in as many years as he’d been a family man, but now he could see how it happened, the slow retreat of society and connection.  Which was not to say he was an island, or even a leper on an island, but there was a distinct gulf between what he once was and what he was now.

Alone, he thought, as friend after friend begged off celebrating the mid-week holiday, citing children and weather and work commitments too soon due...projects wait for no man (or woman) to recover from a knees-up.

“Bloody Crimble mid-week, what shite!” he muttered more than once after various conversations.

Jeremy was loathe to display too much pathetic abandonment, but as conversation wound on from the start of the holidays through Boxing Day he found himself sounding more and more morose.

“Why am I laying in the champers when it’s just me?” he remarked to Andy as they prowled an off-license looking for bargains.

“Why _aren’t_ you is always a better question when it comes to a tipple,” the other observed.

It was sad: the transaction of two bottles for one man.

 

James knew Jeremy’s expression whereupon appearing at his door was worth whatever might follow.  What followed was, of course, a great deal of whinging and sarcastic jabs, but also of quiet bonhomie, which James treasured in any context.

But Jeremy attempting to hide his surprise - and his relief - was priceless.

“This particular vintage,” he remarked, holding up a bottle of champagne, “was cultivated specifically for sad bastards.”

Jeremy stepped aside to allow his colleague egress.  “Does it make me sexier?”

“It’s not for **me** to drink, so how would I know?”

Jeremy attempted to bury his chuckle inside a cough, but James knew.

  
  


All the champagne was long gone by the time they’d settled down to binge-watching and take-away, their stocking feet propped up as they soaked in the violence, treachery, and existential angst of Walter White.

“Drugs is a multi-person operation,” Jeremy opined, pointing at the screen with his fork.  “It’s obvious all of Walter’s problems stem from keeping the operation too small.”

“Security is definitely an issue,” James agreed.  He found it amusing that viewers tended to concentrate on the nuts-and-bolts of illegal activities when watching crime dramas.  Despite the chaotic nature of criminal enterprise, life continued.  He believed there might be an apt analogy lurking somewhere nearby, but decided this was not a time for such deep waters.

“Imagine it, though - if you had absolutely nothing to lose,” Jeremy said, before taming his insatiable appetite with another forkful of curry.

James shook his head.  By the Christ’s hallowed head, Jeremy made it far too easy sometimes.   _You do plenty with too much to lose, my friend, perhaps you ought to imagine **that** , if you will._

  
  


Richard gave James a jingle a few minutes past the turning of the year; drunken laughter, singing, and the high voices of children awake far past any reasonable bedtime clamoured in the background.

“Captain Slow my friend, Happy Bloody New Year!”

“Same to you, dear Hamster!”

Jeremy gave him a quizzical look but then placed a finger to his lips.

“Sounds like you’re having quite a bash, have you got the entire village in your castle, then?”

Richard chortled.  “Near enough!  Sounds too quiet on your end!”

“Oh we fired off a cannon earlier, it was right stonking!”

Richard laughed again and somehow managed to drop the call.  James chuckled and placed his phone on the table.

“Hamster is righteously _pissed_ , I’d say.”

“And managed not to punch anyone?  That’s a feat.”

“Well there’s the children to think of, you know.”

“I used to be so devastatingly drunk come midnight.  I mean, what else is there, after all?  If you’re sober, you have to start thinking ‘bout things, don’t you?  Who am I?  What am I doing with my life?”

“Bloody hell, let’s not frolic down the Path of Regret, hmm?”

“I’m just saying - these are the things which happen when you’re sober.  And I feel reasonably sober right now, it’s rather disturbing.”

“Well I could clout you in the head -”

“Fuck off - you’d spend so much time figuring out what to use I would have died of boredom before then.”

James snickered, glad he hadn’t taken a bite of a poppadom after all.  He gestured towards the television.

“That’s why we’ve got telly, so you can forget about the mess of your life and be grateful you’re not a chemistry teacher-turned-amateur drug lord, or what-have-you.”

“Who says my life is a mess?!”

James took the opportunity to serenade his _bete noir_ :

_But seas between us broad have roared_

_since days of long ago._

“Oh God please stop!”

“Jez, I know you want me to come ‘round when you’re feeling sunk, but I am not going to waste this on you whinging about not being drunk enough.  I’m fairly certain you _could_ fix that without a hammer.  We get old, and sometimes we get sad.  So let’s drink to attempting **not** to feel so sad, and we can sort it out later.”

They raised their pints, just as Gus’ meth lab gloriously exploded upon the screen.

“Now there’s a solution to anything,” Jeremy intoned, “blow some shit up.”

“I do like a good explosion,” James replied. in the same tone of voice he might use to describe his favourite type of cheese.

  
  


Outside in the streets: shouting, laughing, singing.  Chimes struck, echoing in the cold air.  James leaned forward and quickly bussed his host, who then grabbed him for a longer kiss, though it was almost as chaste as the other.

“It can’t get any worse, can it?” Jeremy murmured.

“Some effort may be required,” James quipped and Jeremy extended the two-fingered salute.

“Thanks for turning up, Slow.”

“Naturally,” was all James said, and whatever tense expectation had been hovering between them then lifted away, with the hopes and prayers and dreams and pleas of all those asking for a better year to come.


End file.
